Democracy at its worst, and quite wrong too

I keep hearing people here using the word "Democracy" synonymously with "freedom". As in, "Hey, it's a democratic country, I can do whatever I want." Umm, to quote Mr. Montoya, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Check out the way the "bad guy" uses it in this ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfM9g7XSFug

That brings me to this SMS soliciting. You cannot turn on the TV these days without seeing some sort of "send an sms with your response". There are talent shows where you can vote for your favorite candidate. Then there are quizzes during movies where they ask trivia questions related to the movie, where if you are correct, you could win a big prize. The problem is, the questions are insanely obvious, like "Who is Chiranjeevi's brother? a. Pawan Kalyan or b. George Bush" So all these suckers (if they haven't learned yet) think they are the only ones who know the answer and punch in the answer.

Turns out, these special SMS's cost about three times what a regular SMS does. So all these TV channels cash in big time from all these idiots. Make a deal with the providers and even if you get only 25% of the take, you're making a killing. It's insane.

Hi Cookie, what are you wearing?

I just love the girl in this ad. Can't get enough of her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8khAlg7Iw

This ad for Virgin mobile drives me nuts. On one hand, I just love the concept and in particular the line "Kya Dhakkan hai!" But in the end, I somehow don't think the bit where she sends "What am I wearing? Nothing!" is quite appropriate. That's pretty much saying that you will probably use these phones for phone sex. Esp young people. I somehow don't believe parents will be too excited about buying this service after watching this ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbIT8RH3qc

Another reason to hate the French

Alright you Cheese-Eating surrender monkeys! Did you think the world didn't hate you enough? You think your d-baggery wasn't at a peak already? You had to go ahead and do this -

http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/24/stories/2009022456471800.htm

I'm sorry but please don't lump an honest, hard-working democracy with a nation of terrorists. They couldn't be more unlike each other. Unless all that smug accumulated from US-bashing has totally warped your sense of reality.

On that note, a hearty congratulations to Pakistan on that "truce" with the Taliban. Let me know how that works out for you. No terrorists operating on your land? You mean no terrorists that you are unaware of, or don't have a peace treaty with, or allowed to run your country etc?

It certainly isn't a shampoo bottle anymore

Congrats Kate. What a great actress. I'm actually rooting for her to break Meryl Streep's record. Good job.

Also, not to sound too gossipy but (who am I kidding, the Oscars are the best subject to the gossipy about!) I can't believe Sean Penn mentioned Mickey Rourke but forgot his wife! The camera even cut to her in the middle of his speech and that only made me feel sorrier for her. I love Robin Wright Penn.

Wasn't the directing oscar presented way earlier than it was supposed to be? And I'm sorry, who was the host again? I couldn't tell.

All that was to say that I did get to watch the Oscars against all odds. What odds? For one I was on a bus an hour before they started. I came to Pune just in time to catch the Oscars. Heck I even watched the Red Carpet arrivals.

Earlier on Sony Pix I caught a show called "Chicks on Flicks", basically a couple of girls reviewing movies. This one in particular was an Oscar special and they were presenting all the best picture nominees. I just want to say for the record that I will never be caught dead watching girls analyzing movies or sports. Atleast till someone truly blows me away with their insight into either of those fields. And "Chicks on Flicks" didn't do it for me.

Is the end of that sentence "plagiarize"?

And that's not the only such poster. The latest entry into AP politics, Megastar Chiranjeevi is using Obama as a theme for his election. There was another poster which had a picture of Obama and a caption which read "Yesterday US, tomorrow Andhra Pradesh. Good for you Chiru, way to hitch your wagon to a winning horse.

Cooking Pasta

You know how they say you can "get everthing in India these days"? It is rather true. But it's interesting how that plays out.

At home I saw a bunch of Pasta shells in a box. Somehow my parents saw these in a store and felt they should buy them without knowing exactly what it was. So I thought I'd make pasta for them. Went out in search of the sauce and some veggies. In grocery stores here, there is a small foreign foods section, although it's not named as such. I couldn't find the sauce at first. But my intuition/common sense kept telling me that I would find the sauce there. So I kept looking and there it was hidden between two bottles of schezwan sauce. Actually I was quite impressed by the selection of international condiments and food items they had there.

The pasta itself didn't turn out that good. There were a few reasons but it didn't matter. My parents were too nice to criticize the food and just ate it. We even got some olive oil and bread to complete the Italian experience but it wasn't as good as we expected. The bread was too sweet (milk bread!) That's the last of Italian food we'll be having I guess.

Gah!! I missed the Super Bowl

I know, the Super Bowl was so long ago that you can't even remember the funniest ads anymore. And even though it's been that long since I DID NOT watch it, there's a reason I'm complaining now.

And I was so close too. You see, I was supposed to visit Hyderabad during the SB weekend and come back to Pune Monday morning. Which meant that right at kickoff, I'd be in a bus, and so I was quite upset with that. But (for reasons I'll explain later) I ended up being in Hyderabad for Sunday night. I perked up and thought to myself, "Not bad, atleast I'll watch the SB." So I spent a few hours on Sunday searching the internet to see what channel in India would be carrying the SB. It didn't matter. My dad told me that our cable TV provider in Hyderabad actually relayed only one sports channel (#58 on our TV), and he selected what channel would actually be carried. So even though we technically had access to Neo Sports, ESPN, TEN sports etc, at any given time, #58 would be carrying only one of those. In fairness to the provider he did a good job of selecting which sports channel to show and he has been showing all the relevant cricket matches and the occasional soccer (Football here) and tennis matches. But "relevant" probably didn't include the Super Bowl since when I woke up on Monday morning (Sunday night, CST) I couldn't find the SB.

I suppose I could live with that and chalk it up as one of the problems with living in India. But since that day I've seen the UConn-Duke game, the NBA All-Star game along with a bunch of races and even beach volleyball. Somehow this operator was smart enough to show me most of what I was hoping he'd show me but missed out on showing the Super Bowl! Well atleast I got to download all the Super Bowl ads and watch them here. I really enjoyed watching the ETrade baby.

"My son is going to be like him?"

One of my friends here in India (call him A) has a son old enough to start attending school. He recently met another friend of mine (J, one that is much closer to me) to discuss schooling options. A, who had a recent religious Renaissance, told my friend J that he was thinking of sending his son to attend a certain school (DAV Public School) which is generally considered a progressive school rooted in Indian traditions. J told him, "Hey, that's the same school K attended," referring to me. At first A didn't accept that, "Didn't he go to ...?" with a list of schools. No, J told him, he very certainly went to the same school your son is going to attend. "Hmm" said A in a tone of disappointment, "My son is going to grow up to be like him?" As J explained it to me later, "like him" meant "ignorant of Indian traditions, mantras" and in general grow up to be an unacceptable human being.

Was I offended? Yeah, I was. But I was also quite amused. I guess awareness of Indian traditions and being religious is a relative scale and in India, I fall in the "undesirable" end of that spectrum.

Finally being a movie buff pays off

I was hanging out with my cousin who was in town (Hyderabad). We were walking around the Abids area when I remarked that it was hot and we should probably duck into a mall for a bit. As we walked in I saw a girl in a very short dress. I thought to myself, "I know India is progressing but this is clearly overkill for a hot Sunday afternoon trip to the mall." Turned out she was promoting a channel called "Sony Pix" and they were quizzing people on Hollywood trivia.

She opened it up to the general public and asked "What's the name of the character that Jennifer Aniston plays on Friends?" I thought OK, here comes the stampede. But after no one stepped up, I turned to my cousin and told her that I'd give her the answer and she could go pick up the prize. And she did.

Then the hostess announced a real quiz and again after waiting for the rush which didn't come, I decided to step up on to the stage. I was up against another guy called Satish. The quiz was to be a buzzer-type quiz where you shouted out "Pix" if you knew the answer. And long story short I killed. I was shouting out the answers before she could give the choices. Captures from the movies. Clips from the movies. At one point she politely asked me if she could ask the other guy to answer even though I shouted out "Pix" first. And he got it wrong. It went on for a while and in the end she didn't even quite do the tally.  The organizers were just shocked that we'd won both the big prizes between us.

They gave me a big red box. Since my cousin had earlier won a couple of DVDs, I thought I'd won a set of 10 DVDs or something. Turned out it was a diary with trivia and photos from movies. They did say that they were going to have another contest later in the evening with MP3 players and DVD players as prizes. But my cousin only wanted to go if I assured her that I'd win! Oh well, I thought, it's better to go out on top rather than risk losing the shock value I created there.

Way to stand up for yourselves

The self-appointed Indian morality police struck again. This time (last week of Jan or so) in Mangalore. In a disgusting display of misplaced machismo, a bunch of thugs beat up some innocent women in a pub. Good job guys! And one day when we come face-to-face with the Taliban and they say, "What's so wrong about what we do?" I'll let you answer them.

Of course, what's even more disgusting is that the National Commission for Women - an organization that describes itself as "the apex national level organization of India with the mandate of protecting and promoting the interests of women" after their investigation, chose to blame the women instead. Bravo! An even better job than the "men" who beat these women up. Now we can all rest easy knowing that the women brought it upon themselves. For an encore you can probably drop by the rape shelter, the orphanages and the cancer wards in hospitals and tell them that they only have themselves to blame for their misery.

And you wonder why I don't respect the feminist movement.